DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 171 



species, tliougli rare, were as natural as a metamor- 

 phosis. 



" Or if a quadruped, not yet furnislied witli wings, 

 were suddenly inspired with the instinct of a bird, 

 and precipitated itself from a cliff, would not the de- 

 scent be hazardously rapid ? " Doubtless the animal 

 would be no better supported than the objection. 

 But Darwin makes very little indeed of voluntary ef- 

 forts as a cause of change, and even poor Lamarck 

 need not be caricatured. He never supposed that an 

 elephant would take such a notion into his wise head, 

 or that a squirrel would begin with other than short 

 and easy leaps ; yet might not the length of the leap 

 be increased by practice ? 



The North American reviewer's position, that 

 the higher brute animals have comparatively little in- 

 stinct and no intelligence, is a heavy blow and great 

 discouragement to dogs, horses, elephants, and mon- 

 keys. Thus stripped of their all, and left to shift for 

 themselves as they may in this hard world, their 

 pursuit and seeming attainment of knowledge under 

 such peculiar difficulties are interesting to contemplate. 

 However, we are not so sure as is the critic that in- 

 stinct regularly increases downward and decreases up- 

 ward in the scale of being. Now that the case of the 

 bee is reduced to moderate proportions,* we know of 

 nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so 

 high as a bird, the talegal, the male of which plumes 

 himself upon making a hot-bed in which to hatch his 

 partner's eggs — which he tends and regulates the heat 



* Vide article by Mr. 0. "Wright, in the Mathematical Monthly for 

 May last. 



